You can tell a lot about a man by the way he dresses or, in the case of Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, by his Twitter account.
No it hasn’t been “hacked.” But it doesn’t have to be to learn some very interesting things. For example, Sanchez can be funny.
“Just a QB looking for some work,” reads his Twitter bio during the NFL lockout.
But there is more. If you really want to figure out the inner life of your favorite athlete, you need to check out who he or she follows.
Full disclosure, I am not a trained psychologist, however that hasn’t kept me from practicing as an amateur for over three decades. Also, I know that Sanchez doesn’t personally author all of his tweets. This was gained from seeing a tweet of his pop up as he was on the line of scrimmage during Jets practice. Unless he was beta testing a FootBallBerry, an admittedly remote possibility.
Sanchez sends out public tweets to people like Shaquille O’Neal and The Jersey Shore’s DJ Paul Delvecchio, but he also follows 187 lucky people. Since he is followed by 405,857 people, that’s a good ratio. It’s like being named to the Twitter prom court, even though Ashton Kutcher gets to be king.
Sanchez wants to be reminded about his southern California roots, which explains why he follows In and Out Burger, an account called uscpsycho — he was a student at USC — and former USC athletes like track star Melissa Margulies.
He’s also a team player. Sanchez is keeping up with football players like Rams running back Steven Jackson and Jets Mark Brunell, Darrelle Revis Sione Pouha, Santonio Holmes, Dustin Keller, Nick Mangold and Braylon Edwards. He also follows Jets EVP Matt Higgins. (Smart move, Mark.)
Also included, former Jet Kerry Rhodes and Packers linebacker Clay Matthews, “I’m just an average American... with extraordinary hair!!”
But it’s not all about football. Sanchez also keeps tabs on Nascar’s Jimmie Johnson, skateboarder Ryan Sheckler and volleyball player Morgan Beck.
He follows Real people like Fireman Ed Anzalone, Stephanie Lugo (student, Jets fan and shark expert!) and someone named Pr_Playman who describes himself as “Die hard J-E-T-S and Mets fan!”
He follows Unreal people like international dancer Harry Shum, winner Charlie Sheen, singer John Legend and holy toledo Justin Bieber? Yes, even the Bieber.
Unlike many professional athletes, the women Sanchez follows wear pants in their Twitter pictures. (If you think I’m joking, do the research.) Although Sanchez recently started following Cherry Candy, whose bio reads “I like to party, have fun, and learn.” At which point the grammarian in me adds that she could learn not to use a comma before the “and” in that sentence.
But he doesn’t seem to be using Twitter as a trendy eHarmony for famous people. He follows women with credentials like Lakers EVP Jeannie Buss, ESPN’s Michelle Beadle and The Jets Blog’s Lisa Zimmerman.
And that’s about as much lurking as I feel comfortable with. You too can play this lockout game by trolling through the list of people your favorite athletes follows, all in the interest of partying, having fun and learning.
Just hope the next tweet is, "Lockout over, back to work!"